headsup: the blog

Thorts and comments about editing and the deskly arts

Friday, September 30, 2016

His master's voice

Hey, kids! What do you suppose is the top story at The Washington Times this morning?The Trump campaign is bringing up Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers to push back against criticism of Donald Trump’s treatment of women, as the battle for female voters turns into a mud-slinging contest.

Donald Trump’s campaign is signaling that Bill Clinton’s history of affairs and alleged sexual misconduct – as well as Hillary Clinton’s treatment of the women involved – is now fair game, after his Democratic opponent took the first shot by calling out his own negative comments toward women at Monday’s debate.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

'Hunters can sense the inauthenticity'

From George Washington’s flintlock pistols to John F. Kennedy’s M1 rifle, presidents have shared a long tradition of proud gun ownership.

That heritage would be far more likely to continue under a President Donald Trump than it would under a President Hillary Clinton.

As is so often the case, the point is clearer in the online hed (and the URL):

How does he aim to do that?

Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, has a concealed carry permit in New York, owns at least two handguns and professes a “tremendous passion” for hunting with his sons. He laments that his schedule rarely affords him time to hunt.

In an interview with The Washington Times in 2012, Mr. Trump said he owns a Hechler & Koch .45 pistol and a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.

“I own a couple of different guns, but I don’t talk about it,” he said at the time.

In the good old days, kids, there were people called "copy editors," whose job it was to point out that -- especially if you're going to pick on the libruls for how little they know about GUNZ -- you should look up stuff like the spelling of Heckler & Koch. That points to a larger concern with this story, but first I have to break ranks and tell a newsroom joke:

Q: How do you hide a $20 bill from a reporter?A: Put it in the "weapons" section of the stylebook.

Hence the mild skepticism with which you might greet the WashTimes's claim about what "hunters" think:

Broadly, that's true -- especially when a top-drawer political writer demonstrates his authenticity by expecting his audience to believe in the ".12-gauge shotgun."Read more »

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Sounds like chicken, tastes like a freight train

Along with the gunman who kept to himself and was a quiet little fella, several identity/occupation categories tend to always emerge at predictable places in crime stories: former Harvard student and crazed Vietnam veteran, for example. So it's nice to have a wild-caught example from overseas: here, the Torygraph.

Your next question might be: Hmm. Wonder how long that one's going to remain in place. Answer, not too long:

A second "a source," after all, is now in play:

A source claimed: “He’s not a brilliant student. One tutor described him
as one of the most disorganised students he has had to teach.”

Though, since the link still says "2016/09/21/highly-intelligent-oxford-university-student-arrested-after-sexu/" and the raised quote is still on screen, despite no longer appearing in the text:

... you're entitled to wonder whether the tweak is a reflection of conscience or simple news routines. Or even if the Torygraph understands that, you know, other people besides the suspect might have a stake in how the story is reported.(h/t Diego)

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Leave the rooster, that's human interest! And thus do some stories (short answer: no, but thanks for asking) always find a home on the front page -- even, at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, when the existential peril to the country is reaching peak Kenyan.

Fantastical creatures, in all fairness, are sort of a hereditary ailment of American journalism. Today's Freep, at least, has the excuse of bordering the same lakes:

But the party press has a particular fixation on certain moral fables made incarnate in the supernatural. Take it away, The Washington Examiner!

When Ben Carson, in his speech at the Republican National
Convention, drew attention to Hillary Clinton's tribute to the radical
community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909-72), no eyebrows ascended. But
when Carson went on to invoke Alinsky's admiration of Lucifer, and tie
Clinton to that community organizer, the guffaws began in earnest.

"So are we willing," Carson asked, "to elect someone as
president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges
Lucifer?"Anyone who has actually read Alinsky, I believe, would have to take the question seriously.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

War on Editing

Sigh. If the point of keeping an in-house copy desk is to generate captions about "Motown singer Chuck Berry" for a newspaper that says "Detroit" in the nameplate, we might as well go ahead and outsource now.

The reference (in the otherwise reasonably compelling story) is this: "A cherry red, made-in-Detroit 1973 Cadillac Eldorado owned by singer Chuck Berry." We should probably also try something other than a coin toss to determine how many words there are in "Eldorado." And one can be forgiven for wondering whether someone after the writer didn't understand that "chapter" in this sentence probably means something very much like "group":

“We have a group of at least 50 people from Delta Sigma Theta
age 62 years and older,” said Marion Binion of Detroit, 67, whose
Detroit Chapter group scored tickets for Oct., 16.

Yes, insisting on irrelevant changes in other people's text is also a good way of overlooking extra, commas, in, dates.

Four Americans died in the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, and those who
survived saw their stories of heroism told in a Hollywood movie, but
the filmmaker whose work was wrongly blamed for touching off the event
lives in obscurity, poverty and fear, FoxNews.com has learned.

If you're a Fox regular, you don't need the active voice to know who did the blaming: it was the Obama-Clinton administration. Unless, you know, you were actually reading Fox on Sept. 12, 2012:

So, yes. Fox was quite happy to blame the video, as long as blaming the video fit with Fox's priorities. Your fault for reading the second paragraph.

In one of its occasional attempts to provide genuine political commentary along with Coyote v. Roadrunner-style election modeling, the FiveThirtyEight blog came up with a list of "10 questions as the stretch run begins." Here's the 10th:10. What would keep me up late at night if I were Trump?As the polls have ebbed and flowed, I’ve been 8 or 10 points behind
Clinton at my worst moments, but only tied with her at my best moments.
I’ve also never gotten much above 40 percent in national polls, at least
not on a consistent basis, and I’ve alienated a lot of voters who would
allow me to climb higher than that. In other words, maybe that dreaded Trump ceiling
is there after all, in which case I’ll have to get awfully lucky to win
the election, probably needing both a favorable flow of news in the
weeks leading up to Nov. 8 and a large third-party vote that works
against Clinton.

I prefer to see things differently. What should keep Mr. Trump awake at night is the thought that at some point, the grownup press will wake up and point out that any Clinton-Obama-Abedin "lies" about Benghazi were enthusiastically spread by Fox News itself. Imagine a world, for example, in which the Associated Press -- with all due credit to its watchdog instincts -- realizes that there's actually a difference between nonprofit charitable foundations and fake universities that stay open through the miracle of the well-greased palm?

Sunday, September 11, 2016

'Well within the margin of error'

The latest polls suggest a tight race in North Carolina. Real Clear Politics polling average gives Clinton a 1.2-point lead, well within the margin of error.

Apparently it made quite an impression elsewhere, appearing in another story and a blog post (with a touch of editing) in the same day:

The latest polls suggest a tight race in North Carolina. Real Clear Politics polling average gives Clinton a 1.2-point lead, well within the margin of error.

The latest polls suggest a tight race in North Carolina. The Real Clear Politics polling average gives Clinton a 1.2-point lead, well within the margin of error.

Come to that, it's had a pretty good run since convention season:

Aug. 4: Polls show a tight race in North Carolina, a key battleground. An average of recent polls by Real Clear Politics shows Clinton with a half-point lead in the state, well within the margin of error.

Aug. 3: Polls indicate a tight race in the state. An average of recent polls by Real Clear Politics shows Clinton with a 2-point lead in the state, well within the margin of error.

July 25: The candidates are virtually tied in North Carolina, with Clinton enjoys a 2-point advantage in the state – well within the margin of error – according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average.

July 23: Despite the spending disparity, polls show the candidates virtually tied in North Carolina. Clinton enjoys a 2-point advantage in the state, well within the margin of error, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average.

OK, spoiler alert. Whatever you think about the phrase "within the margin of error" (which is basically journalistic gear-grinding), it doesn't apply here, because the RCP "polling average" doesn't have one. No, really: Look at the top of the chart and you'll see that RCP doesn't even pretend that the average has a "margin of error." That doesn't cause the "average" to be a meaningless number, but it is a result of the "average" being a meaningless number. Hold those thoughts for a moment while we talk about the circumstances under which journalists use adverbs and other modifiers to indicate their evaluation of the events they present to the public.

The endless ride from Battery to holy Ork

A picture caption on Sept. 4 with an article about Boulder, Colo., described a house in
the city incorrectly. The house was the setting of the “Mork and Mindy”
TV show, not the residence of the poet Allen Ginsberg.

On the bright side, the "false titles" rule is clearly alive and well.

Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Today in balance

Well, good to know how things look on the news pages of America's Dailies (here's the AP story that appeared under the Freep hed above). Wonder if it's any better over at a truly Fair 'n' Balanced outlet:

In what could be a "told you so" moment for Donald Trump, the U.K. on
Tuesday announced plans to build a "big new wall" at a border port in
France to prevent migrants in nearby camps from sneaking aboard vehicles
heading to Britain.

So ... surely there's a plan to make the cheese-eating surrender monkeys pay for the construction costs, right?... The proposal is far smaller in scope than the kind of U.S.-Mexico wall Trump is demanding.

A Home Office spokeswoman told FoxNews.com the
four-meter-high wall (about 13 feet) would be built along both sides of a
one-kilometer (.6 mile) stretch of the main road into the Calais port.
The office estimates it will be done by the end of the year.

At least it's vertical. But did you have to bring up the "far smaller" bit?... Though the wall is significantly smaller than what Trump has proposed
– and would protect a road rather than an entire border -- it weaves
into Trump’s narrative that walls work and are a vital part of a
comprehensive immigration policy.

Proponents of Trump’s plan have noted the success of
other countries in building a border wall. The most commonly cited
example is Israel, which built a wall along the West Bank that it says
has been effective in reducing the threat of terrorism. Trump has cited
Israel’s wall as justification for his own plan.Having just heard a military expert on MSNBC note that General Lee won Gettysburg for Lincoln two days after being appointed, I'm not sure there's any context I could add.